MajorMUD
MajorMUD is a MUD (WP) for the Major BBS and Worldgroup BBS software. It can be played over a dial-up modem connected to a BBS, or more commonly over telnet. History MajorMUD was created by Lance & Cathy "Dog" Neumann, Michael "Cat" Skupa, Craig "Morukai" Young, and Geoffrey "Orfeo" Rosen in the early 1990s. Collectively they were known as West Coast Creations, or WCC. Based in Canada, WCC ran a BBS called Dreamscape Online Entertainment Services (DSOE) that players and potential customers could use to try out their software. It was also one of the few places that players could go to ask questions directly of the designers. Prior to being called DreamScape it was called Nightline BBS, and from playing TeleArena and Lance not able to get reliable updates, Lance, Dog, Cat, and Orfeo decided to make their own game, along with all the users on Nightline for beta testers. MajorMUD itself was initially offered as a separate game module for the MajorBBS. Despite its significant price tag (nearly $1000 USD for a 256 user version), MajorMUD was noted by Logicom to be one of the most wildly popular packages to MajorBBS sysops. A total of 9 expansion modules, or "mods", were released over a period of several years, each in kind for an additional fee to the system owner. MajorMUD went into Alpha testing on Nightline BBS on April 16, 1994. Then on June 4 MajorMUD was released to twenty other MajorBBS Systems for Beta testing. MajorMUD was officially released on November 4, 1994. The game itself was written in C and compiled with Wikipedia:Borland C++ as with all modules for Major BBS and Worldgroup. Sale to Metropolis On May 25, 1999, WCC sold MajorMUD to Wikipedia:Metropolis Gameport, a company based in Wikipedia:Kansas. Metropolis promised to continue the work done by WCC in an e-mail that was sent to owners and others on the mailing list maintained by WCC. 157|title=Why MajorMUD |work=The Major BBS Restoration Project|date=October, 2006}} On April 10, 2008 Metropolis Gameport shut down and sold all 7 of their Worldgroup BBS Game Servers. 2835|title=Metro Jumping Ship?|work=The Major BBS Restoration Project|date=March, 2009}} As of March, 2011, the future of MajorMUD is still uncertain. 7267#13314 |title=Found a bunch of source files...|work=The Major BBS Restoration Project |date=2011-03-04}} Expansion modules On November 11, 1996, WCC released their first mod for MajorMUD — Dragon's Teeth Hills. Over the years, a total of 9 content modules were released (WCC released the first 6, while Metropolis released the last 3). These expansion modules added many new monsters, weapons, items, and places to explore to the base MajorMUD install. Module 1 also introduced the Reputation based "Quest Lines" — with quests for "Good", "Neutral", and "Evil" players. Module List: * Module 1: Dragon's Teeth * Module 2: The Cursed Ruins — Released June 21, 1997 * Module 3: Strangers in the Night — Released October 4, 1997 * Module 4: Terror from Below — Released January 2, 1998 * Module 5: The Rising Dawn — Released May 6, 1998 * Module 6: The Sands of Time — Released September 13, 1998 * Module 7: Savage Lands * Module 8: A Call to Arms! * Module 9: Prophecy of Plague * MajorMUD Plus — Entertainment Edition For some time the MajorMUD website still listed Module 10 as a future update, but as of 2011 this is not more the case. On March 19, 2007, Metropolis announced that their current programmer had resigned to move on to another company. Races There are a total of 13 races available to choose from when a player creates a character in MajorMUD. The original release included 11 races, with the Nekojin and Gaunt One added in later modules. Each race has six base stats: strength, agility, intelligence, wisdom, health, and charm. These stats are increased manually as levels are gained through skill points which are accrued as the character levels up. Each race has its own attributes and special racial abilities, such as nightvision, stealth, and increased resistances. Some races are better than others, having higher starting stats and more special abilities. This can come with a cost however, with a sharp increase in the experience modifier. At higher levels a racial modifier on experience can mean hundreds of millions of experience points. See Also * Wikipedia:Major BBS * Wikipedia:Metropolis Gameport References Includes content from Wikipedia. Nominated for deletion on Wikipedia External links *The Nexus BBS a Worldgroup v3.2 free gaming network with MajorMUD v1.11p online. *ODS BBS a bulletin board system to play MajorMUD on today! *Official MajorMUD home page *MajorMUD page on the Mudpedia Wiki *MajorMUD entries in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) *MMUD Explorer - A viewer for the game MajorMUD (2007 sources on google.code) Category:1994 video games Category:MUD games Category:Major BBS games